The Amiga world is an interesting one to follow. As an outsider, it is almost impossible to fully understand all the processes at work over there. The various companies, the individuals, the developers, The Three Men And A Cow who own an AmigaOne – they are not making it any easier. The past few weeks have seen quite a few news items regarding the Amiga platform. Did they help in creating a clearer picture of where the Amiga stands?First we had Ars Technica publishing a series of articles about the Amiga’s history. Ars’ Jeremy Reimer takes us through the birth and growing pains of the Amiga – both its hardware as well as its operating system. The picture I got from these articles was that the developers behind the Amiga were people who dared (excusez-moi for the cliche) to think outside of the box. They were devoted to creating the best computing platform in the world, and in order to achieve that with the limited funding they had at their disposal, had to come up with some very creative solutions – leading to a platform that was way ahead of its time.
At the same time, news trickled out that the next Amiga operating system (at OSNews, we dubbed it AmigaOS 4+1, seeing AmigaOS 5 is already taken) would get a sort of virtual environment, in which AmigaOS 4 applications would run as separate tasks, in their own address space.
In between all this, the Amiga community was debating whether or not the hardware promised by ACK Controls would appear. ACK had promised machines would be available during the summer of this year, but September 22nd was approaching fast, and ACK did not show any tangible proof of the existence of this hardware – no photos, no developer boards, nothing. As many had already anticipated, it seemed as if ACK Controls had made yet another promise to the Amiga community they could not fulfill. The fact that ACK would not appear at the Pianeta Amiga show last weekend only strengthened this feeling.
The summer is now behind us, and no machines from ACK Controls, and I think it is fairly safe to say that these machines will never appear at all. ACK promised a machine faster than anything Apple had ever produced on the PowerPC side of things, which would mean a machine faster than the Quad Core PowerMac G5. A fairly outlandish claim, and yet another one they could not fulfill.
A sparkle of hope, however, was that Hyperion would be present at the ACube booth at Pianeta Amiga. ACube has a PowerPC board capable of running AmigaOS 4, so the community was hopeful that at Pianeta Amiga, Hyperion would announce new Amiga hardware: ACube’s SAM440ep, coupled with the Amiga OS. However, the outcome turned out not to be what everyone had hoped for – a recurring theme in the Amiga world.
Hyperion did not announce AmigaOS 4 for the SAM440ep board. On top of that, the board itself was kind of a let down, as even its Linux implementation was unstable and incomplete. The price of the board is fairly hefty too, compared to, for instance, Genesi’s Efika; the SAM440ep costs round and about EUR 500 (excl. taxes), which is quite a lot of money for a board without AmigaOS 4 and a not-so-good Linux implementation.
There was one bit of good news from Hyperion at Pianeta Amiga, however: AmigaOS 4 for classic Amigas. Supposedly done in a few weeks (where did we hear that before?), the only thing holding it back is the unfinished installer. The Amiga lawsuit apparently has no effect on the release of AmigaOS 4 for classic Amigas, so it is safe to assume that it are not legal problems holding AmigaOS 4 back on the SAM440ep.
As if all the above was not enough news for the Amiga platform, on Tuesday we had Tedd Gallion, speaking on behalf of DiscreetFX and its partners, saying that they have plans to buy the Amiga brand and its operating system from Amiga, Inc., but that Amiga, Inc. had asked a ridiculously high price. He urged the Amiga community to contact Amiga, Inc. to tell them to lower the asking price. DiscreetFX soon replied, stating that Tedd Gallion had spoken on his own admission – but that he in fact did mean well.
That is a lot of news to digest for such a small platform. Many have stated in OSNews’ comment section on Amiga items that the beating of the dead horse ought to be stopped. Why is it that OSNews gives all this attention to the Amiga platform? It has to do with the fact that the Amiga is one of the few platforms out there that are really doing things differently. They focus on non-standard hardware, they have an interesting and different user interface, and, lest we forget, has an extremely interesting heritage. Throw all this together, and you can see why Amiga tickles my interest.
However, slowly, but surely, the realisation starts to dawn on me that the Amiga platform will never crawl out of the valley it currently resides in. Beating upon beating it takes; false promises, lawsuits, delays, you name it. I would not want to classify the Amiga as dead (I mean, there are still those Three Men And A Cow who own an AmigaOne with OS4), but to say that it is in coma is almost too positive.
Does this mean the Amiga heritage is getting lost too? No, most certainly not. Firstly, we have MorhpOS. Sadly, however, its status currently is not much different from that of AmigaOS: there is no hardware you can buy right now that is supported by MorphOS, since the Pegasos and the ODW are no longer being sold. In addition, MorphOS 2.0 has been announced eons ago, but despite promises of “only a few more weeks” (here we go again), has yet to materialise beyond a few videos at conventions. MorphOS 2.0 supposedly will add support for Genesi’s Efika and (soon-to-be-ready) Efika2 hardware.
So, MorphOS might not be your best bet as an Amiga developer or fan. There is an AmigaOS clone, unencumbered by legal issues and lack of hardware, that you can run on your bog-standard x86 machine today. Installing it is a bit of a pain (I tried), but you can get it installed: AROS. It runs beautifully as a live CD, looks rather dashing too, and is open source.
If you want to see a future for the Amiga platform, stop waiting for AmigaOS4 and its lawsuits and lack of hardware; forget MorphOS which you cannot buy anywhere right now (nor hardware that runs it). Focus on the option that is open source, unencumbered by legal issues, available now, runs on standard hardware, and can really use your time and devotion: AROS. At this point in time, that is where the future of the Amiga platform lies.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
Tom
It saddens me that the “official” Amiga OS branches are in such a terminal mess at the moment.
Like you, I also believe that the only future for an operating system grown from the Amiga heritage is AROS.
It’s the only one free of mindless legal entanglements, is Open to development (Open Source) and is able to “find” current hardware on which to run.
I personally “like” to branch away from “intel” and am happy using PPC based hardware and hope that AROS will continue to develop a PPC (+ amigas clasic) compatible product as well as a x86 branch.’
Regards
Darren
to brach away from intel (x86) would infact make it hard to find hardware for teh OS to run on, as you mention is a problem with other amiga os’s (4.0, MorphOS). sticking with x86 chips it the only shot for mass (haha ya right) addoption.
When AROS isn’t even compatible with AmigaOS?
(Much as I approve of the use of Eric Schwartz’s art…)
It will be when the UAE integration is done. But that might not be for a while yet.
I wholeheartedly agree with Thom on this point. AROS is the only sensible way forward for a next gen Amiga OS.
The sad thing is that the other projects that have never materialised have drawn attention away from productive development.
There is a point at which people who follow the Amiga just have to say “no more”, and concentrate on the one viable project with nothing to hide and that has a viable plan that has already produced impressive results.
but to say that it is in coma is almost too positive.
You mean out of coma? 🙂
Nice peace of journalism though.
Heh, no, I really meant what I said: even saying it is “in coma” is too positive – in other words, it’s actually worse.
Your article was good and reasonably objective–where it’s supposed to be, of course–but somehow I just cannot spend time reading about the Amiga’s history. Unfortunately, whatever value Amiga might have held back in its day has been eclipsed by the petty soap-opera melodrama. Now it is just disgusting.
The Amiga community seems trapped in its own self-imposed time bubble, like a senile old war widow who keeps waiting every night for her husband that died over a decade ago. Amiga users go on and on about technical advantages that ceased being advantages many years ago and were then vastly eclipsed by other advances outside Amiga. New gossipy discussions are started about “heroes” whose opinions and actions ceased to be relevant a long time ago. After a while, being in love with a memory just makes a person sick inside.
There’s no point in reporting Amiga news unless the community re-examines itself and starts caring about practical solutions for the real world. Even small ones. OSNews can be about niche solutions. But could you staff people please stop reporting Amiga news as if the unreasonable hopes had some basis in reality? You are propping up a community that needs to fall and fall hard for its own good.
This article is a good first start: advocacy outside the Amiga bubble.
Some have turned it into the most intolerant religion imaginable. Others, like me I hope, just like using Amigas and are bitterly disappointed by what various people have done to the platform over the years.
I think the fact that, 13 years after Commodore, we’re still arguing about the platform, says a lot about how much people care about it.
Strangely enough, I completely agree. Good or bad news, the community needs closure on the issue of Amiga Inc, Hyperion, and Amiga OS 4. The current court battle could go on for years though, so I can’t see it happening soon.
That’s a pretty accurate summary (unfortunately).
With regards to the promised hardware from Amiga Inc. and ACK, I don’t think anyone really expected it to be released. Take a look at ACK’s track record for example:
http://tinyurl.com/2va8rj
Also, I’m not sure that Hyperion have the rights to release Amiga OS 4 at the moment, as the current court battle is centred around the use of trademarks and ownership of the operating system. I’d like to be proven wrong, but I don’t think we’ll see a release of OS4 in the foreseeable future. At least until after the court battle is over.
I completely agree that, as it stands, the future is with AROS. All the legal and community infighting since the fall of Escom has done nothing but hurt the platform. AROS provides a legal and reasonably neutral way forward, and in the light of the current situation, I’m hoping more people will get behind it.
Wow, thats pretty damning! I had no idea that ACK where so bad at delivering on they’re promises.
As for AROS, I totally agree. I have it installed on a VMWare machine and like Thom, I had allot of trouble initially. It runs great once installed though and the UAE integration project should make for a very interesting platform for Amiga fans.
Now all we need is for someone to reverse engineer the ROMs. 😉
So, dear Thom Holwerda. Since there is a possible way out from the deadlock-seemed situation for OS4 (just as you wrote: there is new hardware, which is real-smelly-can-even-be-bought, and a possible classic Amiga version, even if it would not happen within “just two more weeks”), you urge people to install AROS. Kinda twisted logic, don’t you think?
Anyway, I DO urge people to install AROS and find out how useful it is… Or do they have to wait for the UAE integration, which will be happening in “more two weeks”?
To be fair, AROS have never announced or promised anything (“no schedule and rockin'”), so they have no promises to break.
No one’s picked the UAE integration bounty up yet, so it will be a while. UAE as a stand alone app works fine though.
I Agree 100% that it could’nt be more caotic at the Amiga community right now.
The worst IMO isn’t the Lawsuit, but this “Civil War” there still is between AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS.
And one thing I don’t understand at all is why Amiga Inc. dosn’t give AROS any support.
But personally I’m hoping that DiscreetFX will succeed in buying Amiga Inc. and getting an end to the worst part of chaos there is in our community right now.
About ACK:
Well, I believe we ALL have to face that even in a small community – like the Amiga World – there also is the kind of people there only is here because of the money.
Because it’s Amiga Inc.. They don’t give a shit about a working Amiga system if they don’t make money with it.
(yes, I know you can make money with OSS because you can sell support, etc.)
But yeah. I too think that AROS is the way to go. Wish I was a better programmer so that I could help them out
Well, in that way there will always be things we can be better to do. But being a programmer is atleast better than nothing. So IMO don’t hold yourself back in supporting AROS.
The worst IMO isn’t the Lawsuit, but this “Civil War” there still is between AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS.
Indeed. They fight over some breadcrumbs, while they could have a whole bread each if they weren’t that stupid.
The sad thing is that the Amiga brand has a very strong marketing value.
It used to, but not any more. Amiga Inc. have pretty much destroyed that.
Especially after that Kent Events Center debacle:
http://tinyurl.com/3yzh5l
Quote:
Focus on the option that is open source, unencumbered by legal issues, available now, runs on standard hardware, and can really use your time and devotion: AROS. At this point in time, that is where the future of the Amiga platform lies.
–end–
Yes, AROS not better that Windows 95, cool stuff indeed. 🙂
About the unstable CruxPPC port:
The port was not released at the show so you cannot complain about the unstable nature as you would do with a released product (like you are doing here).
The port was finished a few hours before the show so instead of whining you should applause the work done by the CruxPPC team.
Edited 2007-09-30 16:18
And how does that affect the sam440ep premise of the article, namely that 500 EUR for a board that does not run OS4, and has an unstable Linux port is an awful lot of money?
Hard work does not make the sam440ep any less of a letdown. It’s fairly useless at the moment – no matter how harsh that sounds.
Edited 2007-09-30 18:10 UTC
Mr Thom Holwerda wrote:
[quote]
[/quote]
Come on Mr. Holwerda…
Even a wannabe OS journalist like you knows that the first batch of motherboards are aimed at developers, resellers and industrial firms which want to evaluate it.
Yes. at this point, when seeing such an awful article I should call you a “wannabe OS journalist”.
It is not the first time you adjusted the title of Amiga news that we Amiga users signalled to OSNews.
Any time there are Amiga news these is something wrong or ridiculous in the title…
Recently news about Amiga Events like Pianeta Amiga, and the presence of Hyperion at the show were preceeded by diminishing news about ACK.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php/18630/ACK-Amigas-Fail-to-Appear-Hyp…
Do you know what really is ACK? It is a manufacturer that in Amiga world of real “connoisseurs”, aficionados, users, and Amiga news sites, sure none of them will bet a dime on this firm.
ACK it is just a tiny note on the side of the Amiga History Book, and you put it in first page, as it was the real saviour, which could manifacture the new hardware.
Hello? Wake up… ACK it is nothing… and you exceed its real importance and real impact into Amigaland, AND YOU USED IT TO DIMINISH REAL AMIGA NEWS…
Unbelivable. Outrageous.
Do you think it is a polite way to make journalism?
—–
And perhaps study before posting such some news…
The price of first batches on any platform it is always kept high to avoid quite normal people to afford it, and only people really interested could purchase it.
Perhaps Sam440EP was all developed, and produced entirely in Italy with european prices.
Start talking about it when we will see production from Far east in big quantities.
Sam440Ep it is aimed at industrial market (but with an eye with the Amiga Market, because it lacks of any platform, and the manufacturers of Sam400EP are Amiga Fans).
From a desktop point of view a price of 500 EUR it is very high, but for a first batch of industrial motherboards a price of 500 Eur for a single piece it is quite normal, and even cheap!
The people who want to evaluate it, will buy it.
Then they make all the tests they want at home, and then, resellers and industrial firms, will purchase it in high numbers, with cheaper and cheaper prices, when high volume manufacturing of Motherboards will start.
As an Amigan I hope that a good number of orders will come from resellers.
Regarding AmigaOS running on Samantha, you know there is a court trial running.
As a journalist you can’t hide this fact.
Even IF AmigaOS 4.0 could be redy and running on Sam440EP, then none could know anything about it until the court trial will end.
This is why now publicly I feel to say to you that all these ARTIFICIAL SCOOP discussions on OSNews about Amiga, trying to deminish the platform are starting disgusting me.
THIS IS NOT JOURNALISM. THIS IS NOT OS REPORT.
This is just ANTI-AMIGA FANBOY SENSATIONALISM!
You Mr. Holwerda are only reporting your personal view and your preferences.
This is unprofessional.
Are you really fond of Amiga or AROS?
Then cease publishing any new about it.
I think you will make better effort for Amiga developing by ignoring it all.
—–
Amiga it is an Hobby, and if we want to pay 500EUR (actually US$ 710), then it is just up to ourselves.
None will whine to pay a ridicoulous amount of money to buy postal stamps, or comic books, or historical cars replace parts, if that it is part of his hobby…
Amiga it is a matter of our hobby. Leave it to us.
Laugh at us if you want it, but in private.
It is no matter of public discussions the hobbies of other persons, if it is a polite hobby.
Just my two cents, people!
Edited 2007-10-01 02:22
Start talking about it when we will see production from Far east in big quantities.
This is his point: it will never happen. We’ve seen promises about that, but the Amiga companies prefer to fight each other than to deliver actual products.
Once upon a time, Amiga was great. Now even MS has got something which is in most areas years beyond what Amiga can dream about, sorry.
Amiga it is a matter of our hobby. Leave it to us.
You might have missed it, but thom is a big Amiga fan – just ‘a bit disappointed’. With good reason…
@ raffaele
Well, the Sam is nice but has some serious flaws. There are way to expensive things on the board and even when going to far east for production the price will not come down to really nice regions. It’s still a 10 layer board. Those cannot be produced cheaply!
Also the thing that it is a pure italian product is nice, but take the Efika as an example: It has been designed and produced in Germany. The price was down to 99US$.
The Sam board is nice but academic I’d say, but out there is a harsh market where not ideas count but $$$.
Anyway, I wish ACube all luck and hope they will find enough customers which is not impossible, but difficult.
Nice writeup Thom. About 5 years ago I came to the same conclusion as you did, and I still believe that if anything of the AmigaOS I once loved will live on, it will do so in the shape of AROS.
If all of Amigaland backed AROS instead of clinging to vain hopes of this or that company coming to the rescue, we would already have AmigaOS 4+1/AmigaOS 5/whatever you want to call it.
In its day, Amiga was very entertaining, due to it’s advanced hardware, advanced operating system and GUI, enthusiastic user base, and the soup’s on of panache that the whole package exuded.
Today, the name Amiga still delivers first rate entertainment. Unfortunately, though, in a sort of “As the World Turns” meets “The Keystone Cops” sort of way. (With a touch of “Dallas” thrown in for good measure.)
I hope the Amiga continues its “renaissance”. Because sometimes I get bored on Sundays. 😉
Ooooooh. So one day we will wake up and it was all a bad dream and the Amiga isn’t really dead.
“””
“””
Right. Amiga is just in the shower. 😉
I enjoyed watching Dallas, back in the day. It was a hoot. That “Pam’s dream” thing was a disappointment. It seemed to me that if they wanted to bring Patrick Duffy back, it would have been more reasonable to have shown a back story in which he’d fallen in with bad company, without realizing it at first. And then had to fake his own death (using Katherine’s real and convenient attempt to kill him as the spring board). Spend a year on the run from the mob (ala Julia from Falcon Crest), and then resolve the matter before returning.
But if the Pam’s dream ploy was hard to accept, Donna Reed as Miss Ellie was just totally mind boggling.
😉
What does this have to do with the article? Hmmmm. Let’s see. Horses! That’s the connection! They had horses at South Fork. But they were usually live horses and not dead ones. And I don’t recall ever seeing a dead one beaten on the show. 😉
Now there’s an understatement. It’s probably the stupidest plot idea in TV history. “Hey, lets render the entire last season pointless by saying it was all a dream”.
Of course, these days we have Lost which is built entirely of similar plot contrivances….
Richard Channing FTW!
“””
“””
I stopped watching TV in the 90’s. 😉
“””
“””
I was always partial to Angela. Too bad about Maggie. Nasty way to go. Water was pretty hard on the Gioberti family, in general 😉
I think what the platform now needs is one or two oligarchs to buy out all brand names, solve legal issues with either money or armies of lawyers, then give it away to the fervent community to do as they wish. (Why not? Oligarchs seem to buy anything from oil companies to giant airplanes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_oligarch) That way they could possibly get out of the vicious cycle.
As for AROS, it would be very interesting if the project decoupled most of the operating system from any one hardware platform and went the way of JNode (http://www.jnode.org/) — that is, implement a platform-dependent nanokernel and a virtual machine, then do the rest of the system programming with a programming language targeted at the virtual machine.
Why? This way porting it to classic Amigas, PowerPC systems, or any other device would be much easier. They might also be able to use, through the abstracted hardware presented by the supposed virtual machine, GPUs as extra CPUs and other fancy things — “custom” processing units in the Amiga sense, in a way. This is what AROS is lacking from the Amiga experience in my opinion: the feel of running on a completely unorthodox or at least uncommon hardware platform, geared towards performance.
Unlike say NetBSD or Linux right?
Sorry this nano/micro kernel thing is some BS that CS professors have been forcing on kids for ages. Guess what, the overhead is horrible.
I’ve actually built out a mach/bsd system, and it was INSANELY slow..
Trust me, it’s not worth the hassle.
It is an issue of not understanding how a WHO microkernel system needs to be designed/implemented. QNX for instance is fast, and a solid as the densest star… not just GNU tools compiled on top of a uKernel
Is QNX actually fast? Or does it just have guaranteed latency levels? I’m not saying that it isn’t fast. It’s just that many people seem to confuse “real time” with “fast”.
Mach is notoriously shit.
L4, QNX, BeOS, Haiku… not so shit.
Just because one implementation is bad doesn’t mean that the concept doesn’t hold.
Edited 2007-10-01 08:11
For reference, neither BeOS nor Haiku are microkernels in any sense of the word.
“For reference, neither BeOS nor Haiku are microkernels in any sense of the word.”
BeOS is microkernelish, e.g. a hybrid kernel (though the very term hybrid kernel is probably correctly dismissed by most experts as a nonsense term), in that it implements microkernel concepts of servers, message based IPC, etc. That some claim the Amiga OS is a microkernel is just about as valid or invalid, depending on your point of view. The reality is that while Amiga OS exec does implement what would become microkernel like functionality (message passing between tasks), it doesn’t really have defined process address spaces or the ability to implement protected process based application environment servers, along with other core microkernel features. By classic compsci definitions, AmigaOS is as much a monolithic kernel as nearly everything else.
In this current era, I think the entire concept of microkernelized versus monolithic design is obsolete since both camps have borrowed so much from one another that nearly all mainstream kernel’s (NT, OSX/Darwin and Linux), regardless of their origins, don’t cleanly fall into either designation. Furthermore, things keep moving around (user mode driver frameworks, HTTP stack in kernel mode, etc.) so the whole discussion is really just academic at this point.
It saddens me to see the state of affairs. Back in 1987 or so, I had a Mac Plus, and I went to a friend’s house. He had an Amiga, with full color graphics. He even played me a sound file. I even remember it was “Land Of Confusion” by Genesis. It would be another 10 years before I even saw a stereo sound file played on a home computer again.
I felt like my Mac Plus was an abacus in comparison to my friend’s Amiga.
Sadly, 20 years later, incompetence and greed have completely destroyed the platform, while its inferior siblings, Mac OS and Windows, live on.
To be a fan of Amiga nowadays is to be a masochist. To have your platform of choice in the hands of incompetent pseudo companies and greedy lawyers must be just painful. At what point do you decide that it’s time to move on?
As a Linux user, for all its shortcomings, at least I know that stupid executives and lawyers have very little chance of killing my OS.
CharAznable: “As a Linux user, for all its shortcomings, at least I know that stupid executives and lawyers have very little chance of killing my OS.”
Exactly! No corporation will give you Amiga back, because it was made by fans and killed by the corporate agenda already. The only sane thing now is to pick a nice platform and put a free operating system on it.
I like what Genesi is doing, but they have unbelievable problems putting together a PowerPC or Cell workstation. It could be cartel arrangements or just business as usual, but I’m not holding my breath any longer. Just money
Very true. I don’t own an Amiga, I use a Mac, but I’m very disapointed with the quality of the first generation Macbook they came out with. I hope to be able to find the right linux variant and laptop company (certainly not Dell) in the future, since I really don’t want to deal with this crap from Apple again (OS X is fine, but they don’t seem to really respect their userbase).
It does looks interesting to me well, but the lack of laptop or x86 options pretty much keep me away. I want to be able to eventually use Haiku or Syllable once the 1.0 versions are available, and I’m only willing to pay so much for additional hardware.
I had a mimilar scenario. I had an Mac SE (which still works btw!) and my mate had an amiga 500. I thought the gaming on the Amiga was awesome but the SE had a lot going for it too. Higher resolution, if I recall correctly. A better interface (if not OS) and last but not least Hypercard!!
The beginning, there was no real difference, from an Amiga’s perspective, from the software and the hardware. Things began falling apart when they divorced the two. Suddenly the OS had to stand on it’s own, but it was missing key bits needed on other machines. And look at it now, a time-warp, time and energy and money wasted all because some little corporate dictator decided that hardware wasn’t important. Now, AROS is the best bet, simply because it has an advantage that no corporately controlled AmigaOS can have, it has “No Schedule and Rockin!”
Enough about AROS already!
Not only is there almost no software to run on it, it’s based on ancient OS3.1 and there is masses of functionality that is missing.
OS3.9, OS4.0 and MorphOS are all better solutions from both a developer and user viewpoint.
So AROS is open source, that seems to be about the only advantage of it. But AmigaOS is not difficult to hack and patch anyway, look at what’s available at Aminet for example.
>There’s no point in reporting Amiga news unless the community re-examines itself and starts caring about practical solutions for the real world.
And we don’t? Stop trolling.
>But could you staff people please stop reporting Amiga news as if the unreasonable hopes had some basis in reality?
You can predict the future can you?
it’s sad to see a bunch of necrophilia idiots screwing a dead company.
…I fully agree with Thom: hobby operating systems can have a future only if you opensource them. Or did you already forget what happened to Zeta?
Beyond that it seems that commercial operating systems also now need to be open source to survive.
Look at Solaris for example..
Survive? I think you’re overblowing it a bit. Solaris could easily survive as closed source. But open sourcing it reduces the overheads, increases mind share and benefits everybody. It’s the sensible thing to do, but not required. SkyOS does perfectly fine in it’s closed model.
Zeta’s problem was it being legally iffy. No amount of open sauce could remove the fact that they didn’t have any right to do what they were doing.
BeOS proper might have been a better example. I can’t think of any other OS that has gone the way of the Dodo recently.
Thanks for a least trying to put things somewhat straight. OSNews should continue to carry Amiga news, because it is relevant. Anyone in the know will take Amiga news lightly, even comically.
Amiga was great and revolutionary for its time, just like the Macintosh. But we aren’t using classic MacOS for the same reason we wouldn’t still be using a classic-AmigaOS-based Amiga if it had survived to compete with modern Windows or Unix/Linux variants. Times have changed, security has changed, etc etc.
Right on for the hobbyist, but I see no place or relevance for Amiga in the real world. Aside from the Amiga namesake being slapped on something new in the future, I see no future for what once was to be again.
BTW, I see absolutely no market value in reviving Amiga. The brand would have to be built back up from scratch, it would never ride on nostalgia or former glory.
People really need to let go of the Amiga. This hacked together nonsense and ridiculous circus is nothing like the Amiga of old. I learned how to program (680×0 assembler) on the Amiga, and learned the joys of Angus and building copper lists (REAL programmable video hardware in 1985!). The hardware is a large part of what made the Amiga such an amazing machine in her day. From the original hardware, through ECS and AGA, the Amiga was, even in the crummy A4000 implementation, an elegant and beautiful hardware architecture (with the ECS based A3000 being the pinnacle of Amiga hardware).
Amiga(D)OS, Intuition and the workbench UI were pretty interesting in their own right, but it was the complete package that made the Amiga so damn neat. It was the unique and powerful hardware, multitasking OS and highly approachable API that made programming on the Amiga fun and interesting, regardless if you were doing low-level stuff or building interesting workbench apps. The Amiga could simply do stuff other computers of that era couldn’t. The PC wouldn’t soundly surpass the Amiga until almost two years after C=’s death, which is pretty remarkable given that Amiga R&D was already badly in decline, post A3000. Oh, and the games were simply wonderful (Stunt Car Racer and Shadow of the Beast anyone?).
Today all this drama around the Amiga is just stupid. The current available AmigaOS (3.9) is based on an OS architected for an era that didn’t feature or require MMU’s, demand-page virtual memory, SMP, advanced layered driver stacks and hosts of other things that modern OS’s support. The original 680×0 processor and hardware is now long obsolete, and all these PPC accelerators, RTG gfx hardware and hacks are just brutally kludgy and inelegant extensions to a once beautiful platform. It’s like exhuming the body of a beloved family member and plastering makeup and lipstick on the mummified remains.
Everything that was great, exciting, new and unique about the Amiga is dead and has been for 13 years. What is left is this freak show of people who just won’t leave well enough alone and move on. Ultimately, this is tarnishing the history of what was one of the greatest and most influential platforms of all time. The Amiga is dead, let her rest in peace.
Excellent post, pity I can mod you up only one point.
In summary: let go of the past, that is true of everything in life. Keep having fond memories, by any means, but don’t mummify anything.
I think there is a saying about history and repeating…
Edited 2007-10-01 09:26
Just like the old Amiga was a quantum leap for computers, the new Amiga must be a Quantum Leap as well.
What does it mean to make a quantum leap these days? In my opinion:
1) high parallelism in hardware. The Old Amiga introduced custom chips for specific tasks, then PCs followed with custom hardware. The new Amiga should do away with custom chips and shall offer a highly programmable array of thousands of small cores capable of functioning in parallel.
2) highly advanced software development. The new parallel hardware needs a programming language which solves the problems of thread synchronization (deadlocks, priority of inversion etc), and of resource management (memory leaks, buffer overruns etc).
3) a distributed collaborative environment out of the box. All that it should be needed is to hook the computer to the network…then it should be able to communicate and digitally collaborate with any one on the planet with the same ease as using the mouse to draw a shape.
4) an abstraction over the information storage. The original Amiga had an advanced file system much like VMS…in today’s environment, information is the most important property for many, so information must flow between humans and computers. The new Amiga environment should make sharing information many times easier than what it is today.
Of course it would take a potentially big team of great minds to do all the above. Still, that’s what would make a new computing platform jaw dropping as the Amiga was back then…
In theory you’re discussing CELL, but not quite either.
I somehow (of course as a former Amigan 🙂 tend to agree with post, who criticises OSNews for “double standards”. I worked 4 years for Amiga Review here in CZ as main columnist, and I know that in order to be able to judge the situation, one has to have some insight. That is also why I later refused to write for one electronic mag – I did not feel I can do that anymore, lost contacts and interest. That article has a little value and imo brings wrong conclusions.
AROS might be fine, but is open-source a holy grail? It is open source, yet it is developed very slowly. What is wrong with PPC? What is wrong with embedded hw? Noone tries to suggest here that Amiga is first league OS player. It is a niche. And if there is enough interest in it, then it is OK. Of course x86 would be more practical, but that still does not answer the main question – why AROS?
And some ppl here should just read their post and think before they post. Many are suggesting to let Amiga RIP. Yes, last 6 years are total fiasco, and as a manager I would fire Bill & Co long time ago. But – AmigaOS 4, or even MorphOS, are just light years ahead of some OSes which are reported here. They have some apps to run, they are more or less a complete system, and there is a userbase. Yet Amiga is being highly disregarded here.
My take is – as far as user base is alive and active AND interested, then there is still place for the Amiga. I bet most users suggesting it to RIP or spouting nonsense about missing critical features never ever saw, not to mention used, the real Amiga …
Cheers,
Petr
Edited 2007-10-01 05:56
I don’t think anyone is dissing PPC here, and I think you answered your own question when you said x86 is more practical. This isn’t the early 90’s, much less 80’s anymore. x86 won, and for any desktop OS to be succesful even as a niche player needs to be x86 compatible until that too gets replaced with something else. PPC may be the best processor ever made, but success in the tech industry has more to do with practicality, not innovation. But you know that already.
Pattern matching skills. Even the success of AROS seems more plausible at this rate.
It may be true most of us have not used one, but for practical purposes I don’t see why most of us should care. Windows, Mac, and Linux has a selection of features and software options that Amiga simply can’t match, and no matter how good an OS might be, they’ll usually go with the OS’s that provide what they feel to have the most that fits their needs. In addition, the supply of these systems are not without limit, considering how long it has been since the last ones graced the market. It’s that simple.
>AROS might be fine, but is open-source a holy grail?
It’s funny that you ask this after having been burned by Amiga’s death, think how things could have been different if it had been open-sourced.
Maybe that’s why people are not so keen on using new proprietary minor OSs: they know that it’s quite likely that it’ll die soon..
During the past weeks, “news items” appeared for about anything: from some guy saying in some public forum he wanted to buy out the Amiga (I mean: come on !), and asked the users to tell Amiga to lower their price (wow !!
), to the special thoughts of BBRV (“yes, we will release AmigaOS4 and MorphOS, and yes, we will resurrect the Amiga, and yes, we will save Willy”,…), not forgetting the secret MacMini OS4 port “very advanced”…
And now you’re asking: does it help ?
Does it help to tell lies ? Does it help anything announced in some public forum ?
I really don’t think so…
What would help would be to only tell the real *facts*.
So, to sum up, we have:
– Amiga sues Hyperion (you talked about this one). OS4 update has been released, but no one can buy it right now, and no release date for classic version.
– AROS is progressing, but you shouldn’t forget than it isn’t more advanced that AOS 3.1 released 14 (!) years ago, that is to say: no memory protection, no resource tracking, and, no way to “add” this features.
– MorphOS ? well, Efkika has been released, but it only runs Linux. MorphOS 1.5 (or call it 2.0, or 3.0,…) has been demoed, but no release date, no feature listing.
Here is what helps to understand the situation. No date, no commitment, only talks, thoughts,…
Well people can finaly stop grouping RISC OS in the same boat, we clearly have quite a peaceful community, there are no court cases, there is active OS development, new hardware, new comercial software releases, constant improvement to exsisting comercial software.
Amigaforever! No, lol. Throw away that old machine. Experience the luxury of a high-end PC. Visit MS Developer forums, see the computer enthusiasts dream come true. Alternatively use linux.
i just don’t get it.
if you really want to use amiga os and the programs written for it, an old amiga should be fast enough. but if you need something faster, you probably also want a modern os. amiga os isn’t modern, because it lacks memory protection. and it will never get real memory protection, because that would break backward compatibility. afaik nobody has ever managed to retrofit memory protection to an os. that’s why both ms and apple had to change their os, not because their multitasking sucked compared to amiga os.
and if you have to switch to another os anyway, why don’t you just take one that already exists, and add an an emulator and maybe a new desktop environment? all mature os’ have a heritage of at least 20 years, it’s simply not feasible to write a new one from scratch. take an unix-variant and adjust it as you like.
i used amiga os from ’86 to ’93 and i loved it. but i switched to mac os, because there was still no word processor with a good management of footnotes. and even macs were cheaper. i missed amiga os until osx, as the classic mac os was really inferior, but it you could still do more with this inferior but at least still widely supported os.
p.s.: i just found a word processor for amiga os suitable for my need:
“AmigaWriter is the first and only Amiga word processor with footnote management [that] deserves this expression.” (Amiga Special 12/98)
http://www.haage-partner.de/amiga/amigawriter/aw_e.htm
by that time, i had already graduated and didn’t use ton of footnotes anymore. 12 years to write a decent word processor!
Edited 2007-10-01 11:11
I agree completely. In fact, I would say that the Amiga platform would have been better off if some developers had gotten together years ago and made it a Linux/Windows OpenGL application. You would have been able to just buy a Dell PC and develop/use Amiga software on it. Octal-core PCs will be available next year, right?
I went with a Peg II and MorphOS years ago and I must say that I have enjoyed it every since.
Looking at the current mess and the Efika and upcomming efika2 and morphos 2.0 and the constant update of ambient. This IMHO makes the most sense for the community at this point.
I also went the Pegaos route and had a nice walk since then.
And the makers of MOS have already realized that neiter MorphOS or OS4 or AROS or #? except the already big player will get any relevant share of the market.
It is a hobby system and may have chance to hit fit some niches. Also ppc is currently a “bit problematic”.
There is just no reasonable chip beside the low end (and POWER, but that’s another story then) available.
The G4 is old the G4 “reloaded” aka 8641 is ways too expensive. The 8610 lacks an available good southbridge.
The PA Semi chips are also not really best for desktop usage. The 970 train has also left somewhen lest year.
It is really dark in the mid range area with ppc.
Only thing that’s left is low end. But there the ppc and MorphOS are both good for some fun.
A raher cheap and energy efficient system which *is* capable of quite a lot *is possible* (and available), that’s a way to go. Not a multi million seller obviously, but not totally superflous.
MorphOS is not as immature as many tag it and useful for a lot of things, but of course it is not good for everything and in the end it is a matter of taste.
But it hits my taste exactly.
Mr. ujb wrote:
[quote]
[/quote]
This is a matter of production. We will see its price when real mass production will start, WITH OR WITHOUT AmigaOS…
[quote]
[/quote]
Efika it is a stupendous product… but it is a very basic all purpose product…
Two different market positions indeed
Efika has just 128 MB of memory…
Sam range from 256 to 512 onoard…
Efika could mount only 2 ide…
Sam has standard SATA connectors
Efika has only USB 1.1
Sam has both USB 1.1 and 2.0
Efika has not graphics on board
Sam has ATI mobility garphic chip equipped with 64 MB of DDR2 memory…
(IMHO just this graphic chip feature, typical of laptops, or typical of MiniMac raise the price of the card by 70, or 80 euros (110 US dollars circa) more than normal…)
Efika PPC CPU stops at 400MHz
Sam PPC CPU is 667MHZ
+ Plus Sam has more:
FPGA programmable chip
Disk on Chip feature
MINI PCI 124 pins
And more: It can be transformed in a POS (Point of Sale) mainboard due to its CCTalk connector and smartcard connector
Sam can also add further 512 MB of RAM SO-DIMM and raise to 1 GigaRAM memory
—-
Plus: Thanks to onboard graphic chip, Sam has its PCI slot free…
On Efika you should decide if occupy the single PCI slot with AGP graphic card thanks to PCI-AGP adapter, or use the motherboard as server, with no graphic feature and using the single PCI card slot for other expansions.
Sure we are talking of two different products aimed at different market segments…
More:
Efika it is nowadays a well known and apprecciated product and has its current market already available.
Sam440 it is still available ONLY in a batch of 100 or less motherboards to be bought from interested firms which could then became customers.
Again we should see if the industrial market will apprecciate it or not…
Speculate about the price of Samantha at this point, and saying it is very high, it is not a move that a serious journalist should made IMHO.
Edited 2007-10-01 16:53
Raffeale:
You didn’t get my point. I didn’t wanted to compare the Sam vs. Efika technically. I know that board quite well and I didn’t want to make it look bad. I even like it, but I guess its chances are minimal.
The Sam board just is too much (total cost of design) but too little (computing power). It is too expensive by design. As said: it is nice, but too expensive (no and this is not due to made in italy, that’s why I mentioned the Efika (or take the Pegasos it was more complex than the Efika but was down to 299US$ and entirely made in WestGermany*)). When designing such a board you should keep ease of production in mind. The Acube designers are AFAIK still at university or just left university. And that’s how the board is: technically nice, but the market does not care about being nice. The market cares about $$$.
—
* This is of course no offense against East Germany. I just mentioned West Germany, because wages are still higher and it was with even those high wages possible to build the board here.
Making it all work technically is the easy part. The Dual 970MP was developed, as was the Dual 7448/7447A/7447…
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2007/10/la-manquita.html
A computer does not a market make.
R&B 🙂
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2007/08/aros-efika-and-more.html
A modern OS has a multi-user interface. A modern OS has memory protection. A modern OS has accelerated 3D GUI.
I don’t know exactly who is the medician who decided that, but anyway no doctor ordered me to mount a memory protected multiuser OS, with a 3D GUI on my PC. Or maybe I can have both, installing Vista and AROS on two partitions (why not?).
The motivation behind my interest in AROS is that I am a formerly Amiga fanboy who has never rejected his theories about the philosophical superiority of AmigaOS but, indeed, that always thought that AmigaOS would be fine on x86. Well, the big news here is that AROS is now working fine.
Well, maybe there’s no lots of software available yet, but it’s increasing. To the people who says AROS is no more advanced than AOS 3.1, I can only answer that AOS 3.1 was a good piece of software, but lacked of an hardware abstraction layer, a proper sound infrastructure and TCP/IP. AROS has them all. And Zune, which is a re-implementation of MUI.
But the best thing I can say is that no-one involved in AROS has gone somewhere selling dreams. AROS developers are just realizing another alternative to mainstream OSes (you can like it, or not), and a big opportunity also for devote AmigaOS4 and MoprhOS fans: the more AROS evolves and spreads, the more application will be written for it and ported on other Amiga platforms.
Or there is any lost Amigan who thinks (or hopes) that few hunderds PPC machines may constitute a valuable niche market?
We ARE beating a dead horse.
Just let it die already – or make the OS for x86 and let it take on the rest of the ‘alternative x86’ OSes.
I have read MANY amiga histories over the past 4 years on OSnews…isn’t it time to move on?